Wheezewort

Wheezewort is a non-reproducing plant that is found in the Frozen Biome. Wheezeworts are extremely useful for temperature management since they destroy heat from the surrounding environment.

Growth
A Wheezewort requires temperature range of -60°C to 95 °C. It has no requirement on air pressure.

Wild
A wild Wheezewort cools 250 g gas per second.

Domestic
Wheezeworts can be uprooted and replanted into a Planter Box, Farm Tile or Hydroponic Farm. It needs to be fertilized with 4 kg/cycle of Phosphorite.

A domestic Wheezewort cools 1 kg gas per second.

Technical info
Wheezeworts cool the gas around them by absorbing the gas at 1 kg/s in the bottom block of the Wheezewort, and releasing it 5 &deg;C colder. However, the Wheezewort itself weighs 400 kg, and exchanges heat relatively well with the gas, so its own temperature can significantly slow down the overall cooling effect.

Wheezewort's cooling factor is expressed in absolute temperature rather than energy. Neither heat conductivity, heat capacity, nor volume of the gas being cooled affect the change in temperature. That means that the best way to utilize it is to cool high density of high heat capacity gas - for which Hydrogen is best, resulting in an effective cooling of 12 kDTU/s: $$(2.4 \frac{DTU}{g K}) \times (5 K) \times (1000 \frac{g}{s}) = 12000 \frac{DTU}{s}$$

Wheezewort will never cool any gas below 5 &deg;C above its condensation point, meaning it will never liquify the gas being cooled, but it can cool the gas so much that the plant stifles itself.

Wheezewort Airpump
Due to Wheezewort gas interaction, namely, creation of vacuum in its bottom tile, Wheezeworts can be used as unpowered airpumps in one tile wide tunnels. However, such pump will reset itself if the tile that feeds into bottom tile of Wheezeworts gets above 2 kg of pressure or becomes vacuum too.

Spaced Out Logo.png Rad Emission
In the Spaced Out! DLC, Wheezeworts emit radiation; origin from the lower half of the plant, at 48 rads per cycle in a vacuum. The radiation emission means that they are no longer entirely safe to use for cooling living spaces.

To capture the radiation with Radbolt Generators, and Wheezeworth are available the general best practice is to have them as close to the generator as possible. However, since Radiation gets absorbed by the Farm Tile (if the Radbolt Generator is underneath the Wheezewort), one should coose a Farm Tile with as little Radiation Absorptionas possible.

Note: these values are not applicable to every wheezewort, and can change up to 2 rads/cycle. It is currently not known what causes this difference, but it likely has to do with their position on the map since a Wheezewortplanted in the same place will yield the same result.

Trivia

 * According to the in-game database, the Wheezewort is an animal, not a plant:
 * Does not work in vacuum because vacuum has no heat conduct, or heat cap.

Codex Entry
Plant? "The Wheezewort is best known for its ability to alter the temperature of its surrounding environment, directly absorbing heat energy to maintain its bodily processes.

This environmental management also serves to enact a type of self-induced hibernation, slowing the Wheezewort's metabolism to require less nutrients over long periods of time.

Deceptive in appearance, this member of the Cnidaria phylum is in fact an animal, not plant.

Wheezewort cells contain no chloroplasts, vacuoles or cell walls, and are incapable of photosynthesis.

Instead, the Wheezewort respires in a recently developed method similar to amphibians, using its membranous skin for cutaneous respiration."